What I have Learned about a Healthy Life

Yesterday I told you about some of my beginnings to my weight struggles.  Today is a continuation. I started following the Weight Watchers plan 14 years ago on my own with my mom's WW materials and help.  What I had learned until then is that I wasn't made to lose weight easily after pregnancy.  That would be something that I would use for the next 4 pregnancies.

Something else I learned is that exercise alone is not enough to lose weight.  I needed a comprehensive plan to get the weight off.  Doing my exercise videos in my living room or going to the Y was fine but I needed more.  I would often reward myself for exercise by eating, which only evened out the calories I had burned.  When I combined my exercise with a healthy eating plan, I was much more successful.  Getting the WW materials and following the plan made my weight loss easier.  This many years later, I don't remember just how much I lost after combining both exercise and eating better but I would guess that I lost about 10 of the 30 pounds that I still had to lose from Jason's pregnancy.

After losing that 10 pounds I leveled off and my life changed again.  I changed my job and that made things busier and more difficult to focus on taking care of me.  Following the WW plan on my own was also challenging.  I learned that having the materials was great but I really needed some help and accountability.  After a year of ups and downs on the scale I got pregnant with Josiah.  This meant that I started Josiah's pregnancy about 20 pounds heavier than I started Jason's pregnancy. I told myself that I would do this pregnancy differently.  That lasted for about a month and then I pulled out all of the stops and entered full pregnancy mode. This was the same mode that I was in for Jason's pregnancy and it helped me to gain 60 pounds.  It worked again because I gained another 60 pounds with Josiah's pregnancy. I had learned that gaining 60 pounds during pregnancy wasn't a good idea but didn't put any of that knowledge to good use.  I fell back on what I practiced well.....eating more and moving less.

After Josiah was born I was even busier.  The day that Josiah was born was moving day - literally.  My family moved us into our new place while I gave birth to Josiah in the hospital.  Bryan left the hospital to go help as soon as I gave him permission.  That meant that I went to a new home that needed unpacking, cleaning and decorating with a newborn and an almost 3-year-old.  I'm still very thankful for my family that helped me with all of it but it was still a lot to handle. My focus over the next months was rarely on me and losing weight.  I would again pull out the WW books and try from time to time to lose a few pounds but rarely stuck to it.  One thing that I was learned more and more though, was that it wasn't just about eating my proper points each day.  It depended on what I ate as to how successful I was and how hungry I was.  This is how I progressed in my knowledge of healthy eating. I nursed all of my children and one thing I also learned about myself is that I have a really hard time losing weight while I am nursing because I am really hungry quite often.

My time to try losing weight after having Josiah was only 9 months because I was then pregnant with Gabriella.  I was now starting her pregnancy about 10 pounds heavier than I started Josiah's pregnancy.  This was definitely not a good trend.  This time I enlisted some help.  I told my doctor that I was concerned about weight gain during Gabriella's pregnancy.  This was a new doctor for me because of an insurance change so I didn't know her very well.  She agreed that I didn't need to gain much weight.  I tried a little harder to eat less with Gabriella's pregnancy but can't say that I put all of my effort into it.  I gained 50 pounds with her pregnancy.  Although that was too much I had to look at it as a partial success since it was 10 pounds less than the 2 previous pregnancies. My doctor mentioned the weight gain a couple of times but I know that the last thing she probably wanted to do was make the pregnant lady cry about weight gain.  I don't blame her one bit.  After Gabriella's pregnancy I was now the heaviest that I had ever been.  It was depressing.

I don't want to end on a depressing note today but I know that this post is getting long so I will continue my story tomorrow.  To keep you from getting depressed about my ending here I'll remind you that it has a happy ending and I eventually lose all of the weight.

You can see here some of the things that I learned about myself.  It took years of successes and failures to learn these things - most of them failures.  If you are feeling like a failure today, remember that you can learn from those failures just as well as you can learn from the successes. Sometimes you fail more than once before you succeed.  After all, I've taken the last 2 posts to tell you about many of the same mistakes that I have made over the years only to finally learn from them and see success.  One of my favorite quotes that I love to tell myself is, "There is no such thing as failure, only feedback."  All of these failures in my attempts became feedback when I was really ready to deal with them.

Until tomorrow,
Corinna

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." -Phillipians 4:13